Starring: Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg Director: Richard Shepard Category: IIB (English and Serbo-Croat) The Hunting Party is based on the attempt of war correspondent Scott Anderson and four other reporters to apprehend, unassisted, former Bosnian Serb leader and wanted war criminal Radovan Karadzic in 2000. Down-and-out journalist Simon Hunt (Richard Gere, above) and his former cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) go to the Republika Srpska - the Serbian entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina - on a mission to hunt down the murderous Boghdanovic (a take on Karadzic), but run aground amid hostile and vicious peasants and thugs and, of course, Boghdanovic's psychotic henchman. Shepard has certainly tried hard to retain the core message of Anderson's story in his film: war criminals remain at large because the authorities do not want them to be caught and disturb the peace laid down by the Dayton accords. The film has a good grasp of regional geopolitical complexities but resorts to stereotyping Serbian baddies. There's also excessive melodrama, as in the portrayal of Hunt driven by the murder of his pregnant Bosnian girlfriend in a massacre, possibly under Boghdanovic's direct orders. The film's final on-screen textual explanations relating to war criminals reveal a lot about how The Hunting Party is a film with a heart but without sufficient nuances to make the whole premise work. The Hunting Party is screening now
